GLASGOW’S necropolis for “toffs” is now a major tourist attraction but the Southern Necropolis created for the working classes is just as socially and architecturally important, according to leading architect Alan Dunlop.
Now in a derelict state, he says the Southern Necropolis is a “landmark” for both Glasgow and Scotland and should be given as much focus as its popular counterpart.
It is just one of the sites around the country he has captured in a series of drawings aimed at alerting people to their cultural value and significance to Scottish identity.
Others include Castle Tioram, the ancient stronghold of the MacDonalds, the spectacular Old Keiss Castle, the country’s most precipitous tower house, and Mavisbank House, one of Scotland’s earliest and finest examples of an 18th-century neoclassical villa which is now also in a ruinous state.
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The ten sketches follow a series of 12 drawings of buildings which Dunlop considers the best to have been built in Scotland over the last 600 years. The 12, previously featured in the Sunday National, were drawn to look as they would have done when first built but the new ones are sketched as they are today, no matter how ruined they look.
The decision to create the series was a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, when people began to question whether, post lockdown, architects would still be needed.
As building sites had closed and Dunlop could no longer teach, he used the spare time to draw attention to the cultural and social importance of architecture as well as some of the architectural treasures around the country.
“They are all buildings I have visited and been inspired by,” said Dunlop, a visiting professor at Liverpool University and a fellow of the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland.
“I thought after having drawn the buildings that were set in their time but still in use today that it might be interesting to look at buildings that are ruins but are still culturally important to Scots.
‘‘That gave me an opportunity to look at some of the incredible ruins we have in Scotland, to remind ourselves again of how important and valuable they are to tourism and frankly our identity as Scots.”
He began with St Peter’s Seminary in Cardross and the fire-ravaged Glasgow School of Art, then looked beyond contemporary buildings in disrepair to important ruins from the past.
Many of the ones he has chosen have a story to tell, such as Aberfoyle Auld Kirk, which was replaced by a new building in the 1840s that parishioners refused to attend.
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“People wouldn’t go to it, so in order to stop them going to the beautiful Auld Kirk they took the roof off,” said Dunlop.
Also featured are the Southern Necropolis Cemetery, established in the Gorbals in 1840, but which is now in very poor condition, and the Southern Necropolis Gate Lodge House built in 1848 and now derelict.
“I have always thought the Southern Necropolis is an incredible structure, with a great social narrative as it was built as a kind of counterpoint to the Cathedral Necropolis where all the toffs are buried,” said Dunlop.
“This was a place to offer people who were poorer the same kind of ceremony and the same environment but it is now dilapidated and falling apart.”
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